While her Marine Corps training helped, Johnson found the caring parts of her personality more effective in dealing with the recalcitrant students she met as a teacher of English at ``Parkmont High,'' an inner-city school in California. There, she has struggled to reach and teach a group of teenagers, many from immigrant families, who often revel in nonachievment and accept their roles as failures. Colorful anecdotes detail the successes and setbacks of an inspirational teacher with a crusty sense of humor who has resorted to ``a little blatant bribery'' and devised unorthodox approaches (one elaborate scheme involving kissing a kid who slept in class) to accommodate minority students' learning styles and improve their self-images. Humor tempers Johnson's gritty portrayal of her battle to keep her students from slipping through bureaucratic cracks. Her book radiates unsentimental affection for these kids, who ``keep me coming back every year to my lopsided wooden desk, my crumbling bulletin boards, my outdated textbooks, and my own handful of dreams.'' (Aug.)